GRAW PC Demo

stevenmu

The GRAW PC Demo demo was released today. List of mirrors available here. I found this one to be pretty quick. (530MB approx)

Finally the Ghost Recon series comes back to where it all began, both in terms of platform, and gameplay. I've only played it for an hour or so, but it really feels like the original. Slow, carefull, deliberate movement is the order of the day, if you try just running around corners you'll be dead before you even see what's on the other side. You really need to use your squad to good effect too, and while squad control is a little confusing at first, it's much better to have detailed and intricate controls, than some basic simplified interface that doesn't do very much (like R6:Lockdown).

Squad AI is excellent too, they take up good positions when not given any specific ones, and they behave and react to situations very well. Not only that but I haven't seen them spin round in circles, get stuck behind a tree or even shoot at walls once, that has to be a first for any squad based game. Enemy AI is equally good, they suppress, cover, flank etc. Apparantly if you speak spanish you'll be able to hear them coordinating with each other, I don't so I'll have to trust to others on that one. They also don't seem to have any magic 6th senses and don't suddenly turn and start shooting as you're sneaking up behind them. It's pretty amazing to send your squad in to attack a position while watching from a different angle and seeing how they react (or you can watch it all on the real-time surveillance satellite)

Graphics are quite good, altough they're limited somewhat by my 128MB 6800, which can only handle the low textures, from screenshots I'm sure they'd be much better with a better card. Sound is excellent and really immerses you in the game, bullets whizzing by your head make you duck, and the echoes of the heavier weapons bouncing off nearby buildings is just right. Definitly a game where a 5/6/7.1 system turned up nice and high comes into it's own.

I didn't really mean for this to turn into a review, so I'll just add that the official release date is may 5th (altough US orders from UBI's site seem to be shipping already) and leave it at that.

The Free Man

excellent. ive been playing this on my mates 360, you just get sucked into it. they shouldve released it on pc first!

stevenmu

It's a lot different to the 360 version, it's practically a completely different game (much better imo). It was developed totally independantly from the ground up with PC gamers in mind.

Pugsley

So they made the PC one different from the console one? brilliant, a proper hard realism FPS cant be done on consoles (slow reactions on a controller compared to mouse, and less precise).

Sounds promising though, Ghost Recon was the best realism tactical shooter of its days by a longshot, used to love it on-line, going to download this post haste.

superfly

well thats good because theres nothing worse than a console conversion on a pc

stevenmu

Yeah, it's good to see them doing this one properly, the PC version of Rainbow 6: Letdown, er I mean Lockdown was a just a port of the PS2 version with nicer textures and it really showed, both in the game play and the sales figures.


I should point out too that the demo seems to have been built from an early beta, for some stupid reason, so in the release version the graphics should be a lot better and performance more consistent (I can run it perfectly with an A64 3200, 1Gig, 6800nu but there are people having problems running it on much more powerfull hardware.).

Pugsley

Finished the demo, very very short demo, only 1 mission, but you can play it co-op on LAN for up to 4 players.

Happy to say from what I have seen, its excellent, I played one of the ghost recon games on the Xbox and it was disgusting, so I didnt have very high hopes for GRAW, but it plays just like a more polished version of the origional, polished in terms of gameplay aswell as graphics, can see this being excellent for co-op play with a few mates over team speak.

stevenmu

Yeah, it is a bit short, it's a fragment of the 2nd mission apparantly. The average play time for a full mission is said to be around 2 hours, with 11 missions in all. Combined with the difficulty, there should be a lot of play time and replayability in the single player mode.

The MP looks really fun too but I haven't got around to trying it out yet. Domination in particular looks really interesting

Dooom

Played this on the Xbox, and it blew massive chunks. This, however, I think is quite good. Looking forward to the full version.

Two small niggles though; no third person view? And secondly, the cross-com camera thing, that's only in wireframe(ish) unless you switch to full screen?

Pugsley

Spike wrote:

Two small niggles though; no third person view? And secondly, the cross-com camera thing, that's only in wireframe(ish) unless you switch to full screen?

3rd person view is pointless in a game like GRAW except to look around corners, better without it, and Im pretty sure the cross-cam is wireframe to save on frame rate, you can still see objective markers and enemies on it though so it fulfills its purpose imo.

projectmayhem

played it earlier today. didn't feel like anything special tbh. maybe that was just the mission though. looks decent, but not spectacular IMO... probably wont buy this

Dooom

Pugsley wrote:

3rd person view is pointless in a game like GRAW

Yeah true, but I still wanted one..

stevenmu

projectmayhem wrote:

played it earlier today. didn't feel like anything special tbh. maybe that was just the mission though. looks decent, but not spectacular IMO... probably wont buy this

It's a different type of game to the usuall PC FPS, doesn't appeal to everyone I guess. There will naturally be much more in the full version but I think the demo sums up how the basic gameplay will be. (altough there's rumour that both the demo and warez version doing the rounds are much earlier builds than the retail one)


The 3rd person view was partly left out because it allows people to see around objects while still being covered by them, and also because of the body awareness system (seeing your legs when you drop from a helo or slide, the way you lower your gun when you're close to a wall, getting knocked on your ass by and explosion etc..). Personally I wouldn't have even considered using 3rd person, 1st is so much more immersive.

I'm not a big fan of the wireframe cross-com too, but I suppose a proper picture would be too small to be really usefull and would take a lot of extra processing. Would have been nice as an option anyway though.

melekalikimaka

i got it... but the screen goes black when i try play, i can see radar, tags and messages, crosshair and gun fire but nothing else???

stevenmu

What's you graphics card ? A lot of people have been having that problem with the nVidia FX cards (5 series), unfortunately they don't seem to be supported by the game, it requires a 6 or 7 series card which is funny because for ATi cards the 9600xt upwards is supported

Dooom

stevenmu wrote:

The 3rd person view was partly left out because it allows people to see around objects while still being covered by them, and also because of the body awareness system (seeing your legs when you drop from a helo or slide, the way you lower your gun when you're close to a wall, getting knocked on your ass by and explosion etc..).

I'm not a big fan of the wireframe cross-com too, but I suppose a proper picture would be too small to be really usefull and would take a lot of extra processing. Would have been nice as an option anyway though.

I used to be an avid Rogue Spear player, and tbh, GRAW's pulling me back into the genre again.
What you said about the 3rd person view is all true, now that I think on it. I just liked the look of it from the 360 version's videos.

As for the cross-com video, I've been playing through it again today, and it has grown on me. I'd still like a proper video feed though, but I'm happy enough as it is.

Roll on the 5th!

kaimera

Tried GRAW on meh lappy...installed and loaded fine.

I get music, the little tv screen in the top right, my crosshair, compass...and black otherwise

Wasn't even expecting the laptop to make it that far! Poor thing

Bah, really need to fix the home pc so I can play it.

Dooom

kaimera wrote:

Bah, really need to fix the home pc so I can play it.

Coughhowboutthiscough..Ahem.

kaimera

Spike wrote:

Coughhowboutthiscough..Ahem.

*chuckle*

Only a psu needed at the mo.

Gonna build after the summer. Gl with the sale, nice rig for the price.

KdjaCL

Runs like a dog on 6800 OC with 2.2ghz and 2Gb of ram.

Barely got 10 fps, nice 1st level tho very GRish and the squad control is perfect.


kdjac

kaimera

http://forums.ubi.com/groupee/forums/a/frm/f/2791043913

stevenmu

KdjaC wrote:

Runs like a dog on 6800 OC with 2.2ghz and 2Gb of ram.

Barely got 10 fps, nice 1st level tho very GRish and the squad control is perfect.


kdjac

I've got a 128Mb 6800nu (not overclocked), A64 3200 (2ghz), 1Gb of ram and I'm getting 20-22fps at 1280x960 with everything on high except textures. You probably just need to tweak some things. Firstly update your graphics driver, people are getting good results with 84.21 (I'm on 84.25, no idea where I got them ). Updating the Ageia drivers seem to help a lot of people too (even without the PPU installed). Updating sound drivers is helping some people too, as is updating their OpenAL drivers (and copying the openal.dll and wrap_oal.dll files it comes with into the GRAW directory). Disabling EAX and/or using software sound instead of hardware is helping some too.

kaimera wrote:

http://forums.ubi.com/groupee/forums/a/frm/f/2791043913

If you're going near those forums, watch out for all the toys being thrown out prams

kaimera

stevenmu wrote:

If you're going near those forums, watch out for all the toys being thrown out prams

Just linked it cos there was a performance tweaking thread at the top of the page.

stevenmu

Sorry, never even looked at it, the fanboi vs bf2 player flame wars they have on there send shivers down my spine.



edit: Also, people are starting to report that the retail version is running much smoother than the demo.

KdjaCL

stevenmu wrote:

edit: Also, people are starting to report that the retail version is running much smoother than the demo.

I have the retail version, it runs like a dog. Havent had a chance to even change settings will have a look at that guide now.


kdjac

stevenmu

Where'd you pick it up ? Would they still be open ?

KdjaCL

stevenmu wrote:

Where'd you pick it up ? Would they still be open ?

Was from Wholesalers type import place, most shops in Dublin got it Mon or Tues morning.


Noone else had it online, so i havent bothered with till now, good few online atm


kdjac

Ciaran500

I have the retail version and its running smooth, getting a constant 30+fps from my X850XT and A643700+.

Lord Oz

It doesn't actually look that bad on my 9600pro. Then again, it doesn't look that good either.

stevenmu

KdjaC wrote:

Was from Wholesalers type import place, most shops in Dublin got it Mon or Tues morning.


Noone else had it online, so i havent bothered with till now, good few online atm


kdjac

I was wondering how you'd managed to get it, I'd tried both Game and Smyths and they said they didn't have it in yet, but that was probably to stop me trying to talk them into breaking the release date.

Skittle

I purchased it last night from Smyths in the city centre. It wasn't out on the shelves, so I had to asked for it. It's €40 (€36 if you have a loyalty card)

Skittle

Darwin

Paid 45 for the PC version in Gamestop. Ah well, it was convenient to get to. Only got to play it for 10 minutes so far, but graphics are quite impressive. When configuring the graphics options I only have 'medium' for texture quality. Is 'high' reserved for 512MB cards? (I'm playing on a 7800GT).

KdjaCL

Turned Sound from Extreme to Medium and gained 45 FPS


kdjac

Ciaran500

You got an X-fi?

KdjaCL

Nope defaults to Extreme for some reason.


kdjac

stevenmu

Darwin wrote:

When configuring the graphics options I only have 'medium' for texture quality. Is 'high' reserved for 512MB cards? (I'm playing on a 7800GT).

Yep, altough there's an xml sitting around somewhere you can use to set different types of textures to high (kinda silly that they didn't let you pick and choose in the menu). With all of them set to high they need over 300Mb of memory, so a 256Mb card would grind to halt

Kdjac wrote:

Turned Sound from Extreme to Medium and gained 45 FPS

Extreme sound requires a card capable of 64 to 128 voices, afaik the x-fi is the only consumer card capable of this, so there was probably a lot of extra work being done by the CPU try to sort out priorities onwhich sounds to play, 45FPS though, wow !

melekalikimaka

stevenmu wrote:

What's you graphics card ? A lot of people have been having that problem with the nVidia FX cards (5 series), unfortunately they don't seem to be supported by the game, it requires a 6 or 7 series card which is funny because for ATi cards the 9600xt upwards is supported

LoL I've a 2.3 Ghz, 512 ram, geforce 4800ti.... i think i'm out of my depth, I'll try my sisters pc

stevenmu

Yeah, it won't play at all on 4800 at the moment, altough in one of the config files there's a list of supported cards that goes all the way down to 3 series cards, so when mods start coming out someone may figure out a way to get them working.